So, you know what makes a trip to Hawaii extra fun? Having your website — your main source of income — hacked so that 500 pages indexed by Google contain offensive pharmaceutical ads!

Many months ago I received an email from a reader asking why there were Viagra ads on my site. I replied that there certainly weren’t any that I approved and asked where she saw them exactly. I never heard back so I forgot about it. Then, a few days before I left for Hawaii, a friend wrote me and told me that he too was seeing Viagra links on my site. He sent me screen shots and sure enough, there they were — generous offers for male enhancement drugs, inserted casually into sentences about catching a train in Bangkok or sailing through a caldera in Santorini. I tried not to panic as I called my server host and explained the issue. They assured me that he probably had a virus on his computer, as I couldn’t find any files in my public html folder with any offensive keywords. Full disclosure: I have no idea what that last sentence means.

So, the day after I arrived in Oahu — because timing is awesome — an advertiser contacted me and told me she had to back out of our deal because my site was infected. At this point I decided to do a little research of my own. After an hour of confused and desperate internet searches using highly specific terms like “website broken HALP!?!1” I found a simple way to see which of my posts were infected with the Viagra keyword links. The result? Over five hundred individual posts and pages were hacked. Okay, so in one of those 500 posts I did legitimately write about Viagra — but it was kind of necessary in order to explain how exactly I was mistaken for a prostitute in Burma, okay? The rest were totally not me, I swear it.

Luckily, I have an amazing network of blog friends to reach out to in times of horror. My friend Matt talked me off the edge and recommended a talented developer who would charge me reasonably and clean up the issue quickly. After a few hours of stubbornly trying to fix it myself (side note: HA HA HA) I gave in and handed the issue over the developer. That’s not to say the battle was over. I spent hours fretting and panicking and staring at my website willing it to heal itself, all hours that should have been spent enjoying my friends and my beautiful surroundings. This, my friends, is the glamorous side to blogging. Long frustrating phone calls with your server host, lost advertising deals, nights spent quite literally falling asleep in front of the computer (pictured here thanks to my highly entertained travel companion Heather). It’s not all free plane rides and comped hotel suites and parties at the Playboy Mansion, you know! (Just kidding. It is never those things. At least not for me).

A few weeks later now, and I will tentatively say that the problem seems to be solved. The hacked files have been scrubbed, Google has reindexed my pages, and I’m going to try to chase down that ad deal again. The good thing was, most readers actually never even saw the offending links thanks to anti-virus software or page caching or some other sort of coding magic. Full disclosure: I have no idea what that last sentence means. Again.

So, in conclusion I have two things to say. One is to the hackers: Screw you guys. I work really, really hard on this site and how dare you come in here and tear down my work, ruin my credibility, offend my readers, hold up my advertising and make Google mad at me. Google and I have been getting along great, why you be messing with us like that? Get a real job and seriously, God help anyone who actually buys genital related pharmaceuticals on the internet.

The second thing I have to say is to the web developer who saved my life website. Chris Richardson, you are a computer genius and I bow down to you and your amazing magical skills with the inner workings of the interwebs.

I’m glad this is over, and I apologize deeply to any readers who were offended by anything they saw on this site. I look forward to getting back to normal and offending you all the old-fashioned way, with my failed humor, butchered metaphors and my inability to stop taking selfies.

This seems as good a time as any to say it again: Thanks for reading Alex in Wanderland. I love you guys. And I pinky promise to never sell you male enhancement drugs.

You are not alone, I had a similar incident in March. Someone managed to swipe my FTP password and uploaded untold Malware onto my site back in March. I was blacklisted from google and stumbleupon. Pain in the ass to fix and just an utter all-round nightmare.

Glad yours is all fixed now, A lot of people speak highly of Chris, so no surprise he fixed it. Dont let it put you off blogging!Neil Barnes (@packsandbunks) recently posted..Pinnawala elephant orphanage, Sri Lanka

The first time I saw the “links” was around March. It popped up and made for an amusing comment. I don’t know who I mentioned it to (you or your mom) but I told Karen about it and she wasn’t getting them on her viewings, so I figured it was something on my computer. I just continued reading around it. But I am glad you got it fixed.

That’s awful! I actually never saw anything but what a pain for you to have to go through that. I literally know nothing about programming so that would be such a nightmare.Ashley of Ashley Abroad recently posted..6 Lessons I Learned in the First 6 Weeks of Blogging

OMG, the exact same thing happened to us!! Can’t believe it. What a nightmare, right? And we also have to thank Chris for saving our site 🙂 Glad to hear you’re back up and running!Dani recently posted..Globetrottergirls quick guide to Tucson, Arizona

Yes Miss Alex that was the night you were supposed to having fun at the rented beach house! I couldn’t resist documenting the lack of fun you were having passed out in front of your computer 🙂Heather recently posted..Inle Lake: Life on the Water

Ha! Wes’ comment made me laugh too. Maybe you SHOULD approach Viagra with all this free promotion you’re doing for them! Glad you got it sorted (I never saw anything and definitely would have told you, I have had trouble tweeting your posts but will try again now). Rock on AIW!

This is terrifying – I had no idea hackers could do such awful things! I’m glad you came out (relatively) unscathed though; it’s just a shame the people who did it can’t be caught and punished.Amy recently posted..Visit Greenwich

Are you saying that wasn’t FDA approved?!? That explains the hair loss and the, um……yeah, maybe I won’t share that…

But seriously, I’ve read warnings about this, but I didn’t know if it actually happened very often. I would be furious and I don’t even make any money from my site. I am definitely going to look for a plugin to backup my site immediately.Daniel McBane – Funny Travel Stories recently posted..Exploring Gigantic Kong Lo Cave by Boat

Hey Alex, first of all love your blog! So i am glad everything got sorted out again. I had exactly the same experience a few weeks back with my wordpress blog – on the “about page” a lot of offensive pharmaceutical ads showed up (friends as well alerted me to this). No clue how the hackers got access to my site, but could have been through spam comment? (no real clue though). End result was that I had to take site down, re-upload from back-up, basically spending a few days to get everything right again. On the positive side, this event gave me the chance to re-style the blog, put new theme, header, logo etc… to the better i hope 🙂 To avoid re-occurence of the problem, i have since then changed password (of course), and switched off possibility to comment (ouch). Can you tell me how you handle (or avoid/filter out) spam comments?

Hey Frank, thanks! I’m sorry to hear you had a similar experience. I simply use Akismet to filter my spam comments, seems to work great! I would rather close my blog than disable comments — they are my favorite part!

The nightmare of all website owners… luckily, knock on wood, this never happened to me so far in 6 years of blogging and I really hope it stays that way!!! Now I know which contact I should keep in my favorites just in case…Sebastian @ Off-The-Path.com recently posted..Best Pictures of Australia

Ugh, such a pain in the a$$! I recently had a similar trouble, where some readers were getting a “virus! attacked” alert from my site, and others weren’t. It turns out it was a Russian hacker who had gotten into WP, and WPEngine fixed it for me after a few days.Camels & Chocolate recently posted..Photo Friday: Glencoe, Scotland

Oh, maaannnn. This is every blogger’s/website owner’s worst nightmare! Hackers scare me. Where do they get the voodoo to ruin people’s work like that?! HOW RUDE! I’m glad everything is back to normal!Maki | Moon River Travels recently posted..THE WOODS | VACATION INSPIRATION

We’ve had Chris on our team for close to a year now and his monthly plans to monitor your WP and updates is easily worth it. It gives us the peace of mind to focus on what goes into our site, not what makes it run. Happy to hear you got your site all cleaned up.Pete recently posted..The True, North, Strong, and Free (Range)

I never saw the links, but I mostly viewed your website from my gov’t computer, lol. But if people know you, they wouldn’t have been offended any way, maybe just annoyed. It would just have reminded me of walking around Sukhumvit, seeing all the pill and pleasure toy dealers.
Glad you got the issue fixed. I’ll have to keep the link to Chris’ website just in case.Fidel recently posted..How Do You Get the Travel Mojo Back

You poor thing! I’m so so so sorry that you had to go through that, I would have had a total panic attack. Chris is amaaaaazing!!!Andi of My Beautiful Adventures recently posted..Southern California Coast: Day 2 (Part 1)

Hey Graeme, yup I am Wordpress based. I work with the guy I mentioned in this post now to keep my site safe and he’s done all kinds of updates and installs 🙂 Thanks for the tip though! Let’s hope they stay away now…

Well on the bright side, you learned more about website security…I guess? That sucks…and just reminds me of the time my email got hacked while giving a speech and VIAGRA coming up while I was doing my speech. LMAO.

I'm a New York native who left my home to explore the world slowly and thoroughly. I’m just a little obsessed with photography, scuba diving, and reading guidebooks to countries I have no immediate plans to visit.